Industry Survey on BBS - Software Use

Industry Survey Results (cont....). This page reports on the use of Behavioral Safety software to collate and tabulate observations to provide feedback.

Respndents were asked if they purchased specialized software from Behavioral Safety vendors. Overwhelmingly, companys' didn't. Presumably this was either due to particular process designs or on cost grounds.

Of those who did use specialized software purchased from Behavioral Safety vendors, almost 80 percent indicated it was effective for their needs.

Of the majority who didn't, 40 percent developed their own software to cater for observation data, while 41 percent did not collate their observation data at all! Given that 'feedback is the breakfast of the gods', it seems strange so many processes do not make use of their observation data.

In my 20 year experience in Behavioral Safety, I have found it vital that some form of Behavioral Safety software is used to collate and tabulate the observation results. I have seen incident rates surge when tabulated feedback has been withdrawn, with company's quickly re-introducing it to exert control.

Specialized Behavioral Safety software requires much time, money and effort to produce. The learning curve to make it both comprehensive and effective can take many years. In many cases, users are not prepared to pay the true development costs, and go it alone. Often, this backfires in terms of the process not delivering (thus wasting everone's time and effort), and incurring significant IT personnel, infrastructure and maintenance costs. Those who do not use software to tablulate their observation data are not likely to see any benefits from their Behavioral Safety process.

It is important to ensure any software you purchase is suitable for your process: Most software packages are only suitable for particular Behavioral Safety processes. As software develoment becomes easier with modern languages, this may change.